Two who fought the good fight, for bodies and souls

THERE is nobility in their deaths that will forever link the names of Dana Reeve and Tom Fox, though one died in the care of a hospital, surrounded by those who loved her, and the other alone, his body mutilated by torture, tossed aside in the fields of war.

They never met and perhaps never thought about each other, but the quality of their character unites them. Reeve and Fox cared deeply about the causes that were thrust upon them, and maintained their focus even when it must have become clear to them that the end was near.

I sing today of their grace and their commitment, because neither attribute particularly epitomizes our age. They offered lessons in empathy that exceed most efforts to exist in a world whose options are becoming increasingly limited. We survive by concentrating on ourselves. We take no chances.

Except for people like Tom Fox.

He was a gentle man, a Quaker, who went to Iraq at age 54 with three other members of a group known as Christian Peacemaker Teams. They were religious activists who traveled to zones of conflict searching for ways to bring serenity to troubled lands. They were not compelled to do so. Conscience and a desire to be a part of an effort to end the killing were their only motivations.

Christianity rarely had a grander cause.

But when peacemakers, armed only with their will, confront frenzied warriors, the gentle are bound to suffer at the hands of the violent. Those who kidnapped all four of the religious activists called themselves the Swords of Righteousness, but there was no righteousness in the deeds perpetrated in the name of Allah.

Fox, Harmeet Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kember, all believers in nonviolence, were abducted last November. The remaining three are still being held by their captors, and we can only wait with apprehension at their fate. Pleas for the release of all four had fallen on deaf ears. Then, suddenly, the response was made in blood.

The body of Tom Fox was found wrapped in a blanket and plastic bags in a garbage dump in Baghdad. His hands and feet were tied, there were gunshot wounds to his head and chest, and bruises to his body that indicated torture by electricity.

One who ventures into a war zone, speaking softly of peace when all around him loud and angry voices are raised in shouts of death, must realize that the odds are against him. This is not a war where detente is pursued in a spirit of atonement.

Friends said Fox knew it was dangerous, but he believed that if he touched one person, he would have made a difference. His commitment in Iraq was to bring comfort to the families caught in the crossfire of war, and to work with Muslim groups. He died because he held to his beliefs, and the three others in captivity may die for the same reason, because jihad tramples the innocent along with the warriors.

It might seem a stretch in a way to link him with Dana Reeve. But, like Fox, few had ever heard of her before fate thrust them both into prominence, before their lives were taken in the same clasp of time.

She was a singer and an actress of limited fame until a horseback riding accident turned her husband, actor Christopher Reeve, into a quadriplegic. Christopher was the star, the cinematic Superman who flew through our lives with the grace of an eagle.

But even eagles fall, and in 1995 he plummeted to Earth, and we began hearing of his wife. She was his caregiver, his love, his partner true to a vow of for better or worse. She gave up her own career to be at his side.

Sure she did, we said. It’ll last until the interest fades and she finds a new lover, we said. It’s tragic, we said, but it’s showbiz. She’ll leave him and move on.

Time proved us wrong. Not just the woman by his side, she emerged as his voice and her own in a quest to find treatment and a cure for the results of the accident that had paralyzed him. In his name, and in the name of altruism that stretched far beyond Hollywood, she raised millions.

She utilized her beauty and her drive to call attention not only to a fallen actor but also to the need for more work in giving movement to those who were without it.

What she was doing, and the love she displayed, a friend said, was not a photo op. She meant it. Her love was an enduring reality of the life she had chosen, and the love she would not abandon.

If the paralysis of her husband, Superman humbled by an accident, embraced a terrible irony, so did her death. A nonsmoker, she died of lung cancer just two years after the deaths of both her husband and her mother. But she faced the end of her own life with the same grace with which she had faced the cruelties embodied in her commitment to a fallen lover.

The deaths of Fox and Reeve, coming in close proximity, remind us that compassion and honor still exist, despite their pain and their costs. While storms may blow away their memories like names written in dust, it is well for us to acknowledge them today and take pride in the high moral landscape of their choices.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@ latimes.com.